Santa Ana winds driving walls of flame
LOS ANGELES: Santa Ana winddriven walls of flame spurred mass evacuations in Southern California and badly injured two firefighters yesterday.
The latest threats came amid what meteorologists called the strongest onslaught of extreme winds yet documented during an already epic California wildfire season.
Fires have scorched more than 16,500sq km since the start of the year, destroying thousands of homes and killing 31 people.
A blaze dubbed the Silverado fire erupted on Monday night and spread across 2913ha of Orange
County by yesterday morning, county fire authority spokesman Thanh Nguyen said.
About 90,800 residents were ordered evacuated from homes in and around the city of Irvine as the fire raged largely unchecked through droughtparched brush in the canyons and foothills of the Santa Ana Mountains south of Los Angeles, officials said.
No property losses were immediately reported but two firefighters among some 500 personnel battling the flames were taken to hospital with severe burns, authorities said.
A second Orange County blaze, the Blueridge fire, later broke out near Yorba Linda and has charred roughly 485ha, Nguyen said. Local television news footage showed at least one home gutted.
An estimated 1170 homes were under evacuation orders from that blaze, the county fire authority tweeted yesterday.
Utility company Southern California Edison (SCE) said its equipment was under investigation as a possible source of the Silverado fire.
‘‘It appears that a lashing wire attached to a telecommunications line may have contacted SCE’s power line above it, possibly starting the fire,’’ a spokesman said.
SCE had shut off electricity to 21,000 homes and businesses because of fire risks from dangerous winds.
Wind gusts were clocked at up to 143kmh in Sonoma County north of San Francisco Bay, and were steadily blowing at more than 80kmh nearby.
Further east in droughtstricken Colorado, an Arctic storm sweeping the Rockies over the weekend dumped 15cm40cm of snow on the two largest wildfires in that state’s history.
‘‘The snow has improved our chances of getting them contained, but we’re still a way off,’’ said Larry Helmerick, spokesman for the Rocky Mountain Area Coordination Centre. — Reuters